Blizzard on Diablo 3 End Game Shortcomings

Posted By: July 4, 2012

Bashiok has made a post regarding long term replayability which makes for a sobering read.

We recognize that the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game. There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they’re going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven’t already). Killing enemies and finding items is a lot of fun, and we think we have a lot of the systems surrounding that right, or at least on the right path with a few corrections and tweaks. But honestly Diablo III is not World of Warcraft. We aren’t going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months. There needs to be something else that keeps people engaged, and we know it’s not there right now.

We’re working toward 1.0.4, which we’re really trying to pack with as many fixes and changes we can to help you guys out (and we’ll have a bunch of articles posted with all the details as we get closer), and we’re of course working on 1.1 with PvP arenas. I think both those patches will do a lot to give people things to do, and get them excited about playing, but they’re not going to be a real end-game solution, at least not what we would expect out of a proper end-game. We have some ideas for progression systems, but honestly it’s a huge feature if we want to try to do it right, and not something we could envision being possible until well after 1.1 which it itself still a ways out.

End game has always been a major concern within the dev team and Bashiok has revealed that it even kept Wyatt Cheng awake at night with worry.

…and Wyatt expressed specifically that giving players some sort of end-game that doesn’t involve grinding areas or bosses is something that keeps him up at night.

It’s accepted that Diablo III isn’t the same type of beast as WoW and no one is expecting new systems to be rolled out every few months but it’s harder to accept that we could “at least be on the right path” to having the existing systems right. Keep that one out the marketing bumph if I were you guys.

With no PvP, ladder or ability to mod the game Diablo 3 was destined before release to be about the item grind in Inferno. However, with not just bosses able to reward players with the best loot grinding promised to be even more fun than it is in Diablo 2. Only it isn’t working out like that.

Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose, but we believed pre-release that the item hunt would be far more sustainable, and would work to be a proper end-game for quite a while. That didn’t turn out to be true, and we recognize that.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but in this case they were forewarned as they knew from Diablo 2 and acknowledged that part of the appeal of the Diablo franchise lay in the item hunt at end game and if that had been tested by a larger number of people it would have assuredly become apparent that it wasn’t proving as satisfying as it should be.

PvP content patch 1.1 and Patch 1.0.4 aren’t destined to be the panacea either as Bashiok admits “they’re not going to be a real end-game solution” or provide us with “a proper end game”.

So when will that arrive? Will they roll out a substantial content patch or will they need to convince us to put our hands in our pockets when the expansion pack arrives because that will give us a “proper end game”?

With all that said there are people clocking up a large number of hours in game. I just checked my friends list and from the 18 people on there, the average number of hours played works out to 237. That works out to just under 10 full days of play.

I am confused. Were there not hundreds or thousands that did not play pvp in D2 and still looped that stupid baal?? these people all had the same uniform (so you really weren’t looking for new gear to actually use most of the time). hammerdins, ww, etc. so why did we do it? it was fun. the game needs some tweaks to be sure, but its diablo. WTF did you think it was going to be? some folks, i think, have this fantasy nostalgia of what they “think” D2 was.

Except some of us stopped playing with the latest ladder reset in May and know full well what D2 is and it’s a hell of a lot more fun grinding in that game than D3 in its current form. And that’s a crying shame because I for one was ready to drop D2 for good.

D3 makes you want to play D2 lmao. Its so bad, unfun and poker machine like. Its one ugly sad ass piece of shit of a game. These developers can’t make shit, they’re got everything they could need to do a great sequel and pure shit is what they come up with.

It took years and years to get a car that you didn’t need to push start. Should we still be getting push start cars only to “upgrade them” as we own them? Just because something took years to implement the first time, doesn’t mean that it should take that long again, especially since they already know it works!

well, simplest things to implement would be improvements in crafting system (atm I find myself sitting on hundreds of mats that are totally useless) and improvements to uniques that to add anticipation to item hunt (atm it is wow… unique, i hope it sells for like 500k); anything more is not realistic before lot after 1.1 or first expansion 🙁

For four years we railed on and on about end game, why it can’t be just item hunting, and I saw so many great suggestions.

What did they do? Nothing. Nothing at all besides some data-driven buff that was implemented shortly before release. Can someone PLEASE explain to me how this game took 7+ years to make?

As for when we will see a “solution”? From this team? Likely never, but probably their limp attempt at it with the first expansion. The basics are in place for what could have been a really cool game with a lot of longevity. Sure, like Elly said there’s people clocking in 200+ hours, but it behooves blizzard due to their financial model to keep them playing. They won’t. The ones on our friends list are hardcore fans. They’re us. Or at least hardcore gamers.

“Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose, but we believed pre-release that the item hunt would be far more sustainable, and would work to be a proper end-game for quite a while. That didn’t turn out to be true, and we recognize that.”

What hindsight? Item hunt would have been fine if the items were fine. Pretty sure the failures of the item system were noted back in fall.

So sick of this response to ANY positive comment about D3. It’s ok for people to enjoy the game!

And one could use the exact same comment with D2 replacing D3 for every “D2 did X so much better than D3”. D2 was awesome but it was awesome because it was addictive. The game play was a repetitive clickfest. D3 is a fun game (you actually actively play the game) but people are right to say that it isn’t as addicting as D2 was. But I see hope that Blizzard is looking to correct this.

People just need to cut the D3/blizz fanboy comments with every positive D3 comment. Allow people to like the game.

Exactly. It was also noted that an ah among other systems/choices would diminish an item hunt end game as well.

Blizzard and bashiok specifically responded with a condescending attitude and sarcasm. Often times with comments belittling posters. I realize posters aren’t always having the best attitude. But l expect better from blizzard reps.

well, it’s really hard to make a good videogame in less than 12 years. and the tiny tiny window of 4 years they had after announcing the game was not enough time to complete any of the major features that D2 shipped with

Depends on your definition of being ready. What other PC game that is not MMO, that is not competitive PvP, spots an “end game”? The fact that they are trying to implement one deserves praise, I think.

I would absolutely hate it if all they did was add some sort of extended level grind. A lot of people might enjoy it, but in the end all it comes down to is facing the exact same monsters over and over with every little variation in anything except some numbers on an XP bar. I’d rather have more actual content, like ubertristram from D2, except a LOT more of them.

Thanks for the link. However, almost everyone has seen this video, including Blizzard. The blue-post said Diablo 3 is not World of Warcraft and cannot have additional content every few months. Their basically telling us that the resources are not there.

The game didn’t turn out good enough and the team working on it may or may not have been upset.. ‘Wyatt Cheng’. It sounds like the money behind Diablo 3 was cut big time after release or near release because no subscription money like WoW. Sucks big time, but big corporation owns Blizzard now, not the hardcore fan base. So here we are.

The point is, there is no longer ‘Blizzard’. There is just a company with a dollar figure. I can’t speak for the RMAH transacation money; I can only speculate. It is nowhere near WoW subscriptions profits. The state of itemization in D3 easily destroyed this within days of opening.

I also don’t think anyone making decisions behind post game development in ActiBlizz wanted to devote a lot of funds to updating the game. It seems like they projected item farming was going to be viable end game for much longer than it lasted/will last. The fate of Diablo 3 may be up to mods.

I’m sorry, I misunderstood the point of your original post. I see now, and yes unfortunately I think you/ and the captcha are correct :(.

On a side note, I don’t know either what the revenue from RMAH is, but when it was announced and so controversial I remember thinking: “well it has the potential to be a good revenue stream as long as blizzard don’t fark it up”, I suppose only time will tell.

And those of us who told them of their errors were called trolls and haters. People are leaving the game in droves so they can no longer bury their heads in the sand or cop an attitude of superiority with the players. The question is, will they commit enough resources to save their franchise?

They need to go to a system that has actual character customization. Skill points, attribute points, actual character builds instead of skills of the moment. And of course improve the boring, bland items. The rune system for skills was a good idea and they should keep that, but make all the skills viable. Currently most are not. Skill trees should be implemented. Currently players have no control over the development of their characters.

The idea of every wizard = every wizard just does not cut it.

Oh, and scrap the Real Money Auction House.

Blizzard also should stop trying to control how players play the game. Let them farm chests, urns, mini-bosses, bosses, goblins, or areas to their little heart’s content. The game must be about what is fun for the player, not developer control over the player.

Oh, they could make the game playable offline instead of treating all their customers like pirates. Some good mods would come from the players.

You think many qqers complain because they hate the game? Quite the opposition, it’s because they want to see it succeed and become what it could’ve been. It’s only because most of them cares that they qq, those that don’t just leave. Seeing a fanboy tell a qqer to leave if they don’t like is so derpy it hurts (well.. some exceptional qqers really do pass that line)

Yes some qqs does go overboard or are plain stupid, but I see too many valid ones get stomped by fanboys. Not all fanboys but you know the type I’m talking about, (just make any qq, valid or not in forum and they’ll show).

At the end, this type of fanboys hurt the growth and development of a game, Diablo 3 should be a prime study case in a game development class in this regards.

Alas, it’s the financial success that counts, and I think D3 is quite successful in that regards.

Unfortunately, it’s all moot and hopeless at this point, unless they change their overall corporate strategy that centers their game design around RMAH and not the other way around.

Absolutely good to see some honesty from Blizzard, even if it is very bad news. I will play through PvP and see if things have been tweaked right by then to make this game last a bit longer.

But if several months after PvP things are still as dreadful as they are now, I may have to take time off for good. I’m sure many players are still playing and oblivious or hopeful, but the game clearly is lacking a staying factor that Diablo 2 had. I do like Diablo 3, but it lacks many features that made Diablo 2 keep so long. I think one thing for sure is community.. despite all they had said about co-op and being social.. I find I have to go out of my way to be social in Diablo 3. It’s like single player online, and that hurts to admit 🙁

I wanted D3 to be a ton of fun, like D2. I wanted to play it for a dozen years like I did D2, buying up all the expansion content I could get along the way. I watched the development of this game long before it was announced in June 2008 and anticipated it from the moment I completed D2.

I’m no Blizzard apologist, but I’m no hater, either. The game is genuinely just not fun once the item hunt begins. I’m just hugely disappointed by the fact that a gaming IP like this that I loved so long (since D1) could just fall off like this.

What they’re saying about fixing MF just doesn’t sit right either. I hope everyday they’ll release a blog post or something that makes the game sound like they’re heading in the right direction, but clearly they don’t know how to fix it. Capping MF is not the answer, and neither is any of the other four absurd options they proposed.

Legendaries aren’t supposed to suck. Not all of them anyway… and you’re not supposed to find an endless flood of boring rares with the only difference between them being a dozen more of this stat or a couple more of that stat. Boring..

I was actually having a talk with a friend about this and we were both convinced some kind of public ‘Our Bad’ was going to happen. While we’re both content with spent of time played we got(+100 hours is a pretty rare catch for a $60 title these days) Diablo 3 is definitely a different beast than the one we were all expecting.

I think using the term ‘admitting’ here is trying to put a negative spin on things as they’ve never really tried to obscure what’s been happening to begin with. I feel a little bad for them, I think they took on way too much in trying to get this game out and ended up releasing this 70% complete product. The problem is that in order to get to that 100% they would need to deconstruct some major issues that already exist and they can’t do that with a released product. Once the ships in the water you’re just stuck patching up what you can.

Ultimately I think Diablo 3 is the sign that Blizzard is well past the point where they need to strike out with a fresh IP, I honestly believe if they had just gone with a ‘spiritual successor’ route and made their own kind of ARPG with a RMAH spin, players would of been much more receptive and the product would of been of a much higher quality.

Amazing how they thought the item grind would cover the end game for a considerable amount of time considering how incredibly disappointing it is in this game to find a high (or any) level unique or set item… I have found 4 uniques and 1 set item in around 300-350 hours of playtime and not one has been worth using yet, at level 14 when I found my first one or at level 60… so how they could even say they expected the item grind to last with such craptastic set/ unique items is beyond me.

Agreed, the item-hunt simply isn’t going to sustain the game. The lack of customised builds is still a major thorn in the side, it’s nice that I can make any build like Guild Wars but it completely removes individuality and the true joy in creating your own build.

Big epic quests like the Pandemonioum Event and Uber Diablo are whats needed in the game. Something more than just getting 5 NV stacks and murdering every elite/boss pack, as fun as I find it it’s still rather lacking

As a HC player i feel it a great chore to play to 60 from start if i die. Not rewarding at all because if i find something it will surely suck balls at end game.

So they killed grinding to 60. And if i play on lvl 60 its not that fun finding items and replacing them because of 10 more vit or 15 more str. We want uniqueness god dammit. how have they missed that!

General question: what is the consensus definition of the “end-game item hunt”?

I played solo D2 and had a MF Sorceress to help find good gear for my characters, enough to allow them to finish Hell, but after that I pretty much stopped playing. So for me the “end-game” was literally the end of the game.

I’m simply curious what this lack of end-game actually implies for certain people and why this Bashiok post is considered bad news. Myself, I just completed A1 Inferno and have enjoyed the game consistently since release.

I think it’s a lot of things all contributing, and many of those little things seem defensible on their own.

1) AH makes it too easy to get overgeared. 2) Freespecs = no reason to reroll. 3) Auto-attributes = no sense of character identity or individuality. 4) Sets/uniques are too uncommon and lacking in flavor or quality. 5) Inferno is really hard and requires super gear and limits play styles/varieties. 6) No PvP. 7) The low max level = long term play is only about item finding. 8. Crafting can only produce Rares identical to what you might find anyway. 9) No gambling makes set/unique feel even scarcer. 10) More if I took time to think of them.

D2’s end game was Hell, which you could do with a crappy char, or a variant, or while using very specialized unique gear, or all devoted to MF, etc. The hard part wasn’t to survive it, it was to do it more quickly, with more MF, etc.

We could do D3’s Hell in the same way (minus the variants from weird unique gear), but since there’s Inferno, everyone looks at it as the end game. But Inferno is really hard, which requires great gear and set char builds, which crush diversity and variety and make the underpowered sets/uniques seem even more useless.

It just seems like a lot of unintended consequences to me. Lots of features that sounded good, or at least not-bad on their own, combining to make an end game that’s much less compelling than what we saw in D2. Or in WoW, apparently.

Legendary item solution is to have more fixed stats that are usefull, like have either high all armor or all res stats, or high dmg ranges for weapons and if barbarian item, always have some random amount of str on item, int for casters etc.

What I would propose is to create a classic mode. Short summary of features:

– Possibility to activate when character reaches level 60 – All given bases stats and skills are cleared and you can chooce the stats and skills you want, but it will be permanent – Skills stay fixed, but your able to change runes as much as you want – At classic mode you will gain levels or classic levels above 60, each level giving like 5 stats that you can appoint to vit or str what ever you prefer. Highest level 99 so a bit more than 200 stats available and still having balance in game (>7k life or 200% more dmg, 20 all res etc) – Have classic arena battles with ranking – Items, gold etc are shared like before with normal and classic characters

Pros are that you continue to develop character and makes sense to level new same classes. Even with same skills when runes are changable it gives plenty variety. At time when Blizzard makes all or most skills usable there will be huge amount different builds and those are builds based on skill itself and not more complex rune variant builds.

Negative sides? Well this makes what D2 did basically, it really didnt matter how high level you were after 80 if you could equipt all items you needed. Blizzard has stated that they like to game be more accessible to all and have freedom to change spec when ever they want, but how about give players freedom to what ever they want. Even it means that in classic mode player is locked to certain stat distribution and skills forever. Well you could have $$ option to disable classic mode but then you lose all extra stats points and original random stats are returned.

Edit:

Additionally you could get classic exp based on damage you do on pvp, arena or open world.

To make PVE more interesting is stop nerfing mf or loot drops. Have random dungeons to drop more better loot not only gold chest, all mobs should have higher chance for higher iLev items on all inferno acts.

Purple rare mosters needs to drop yellow item same when you have NV activated, not necessary all 5.

Make it possible to switch acts as you like and not to lose NV stacks.

some items just need to be overpowered. Increase the number of customizeable skill runes, buff the abilities that are clearly lacking in use and usefulness. Make class specific items always give that classes desired stat and always have an enchancement that is not a part of the item budget, More gem effects and more gem effects for different slots, more gem types or runes that don’t make runewords, but add huge value to unattainable current gem effects.

Skill modifiers are needed on items, plain and simple if it makes you slightly OP so what? that is what allows us to diversify our builds.

Please reduce the need for 700-800 all resist to sustain on certain makeups.

get back to the lobby system similar to D2, this current setup just doesn’t really make it easy for anyone to mingle with other like minded people that they don’t know. Clans etc. were awesome in D2 what was wrong with them?

Give some incentive for item to item trading or atleast make it easier by making the chat area more inviting instead of a chatbox. I think the chatbox is fine for in game, but ‘in menus’ it should be more expansive.

Add more elite pack ability types to make things more interesting there. Maybe possible make it where 5 NV means bosses always drop atleast 1 class specific item for the character being played. Maybe increase the number of higher quality items bosses drop depending on the number of players in party helping you kill a boss that also have 5 NV.

Make 2 handed weapons more desireable for classes. I’m looking at you Daibo. Here’s an idea on that front. Make wearing a 2 hander mean you get a passive life regeneration buff, say 100% so people have other options for their life sustain instead of stacking LoH and attack speed. Could even allow LoH to crit based on Character crit so attack speed has another rival in value and usefuleness.

The problem with Inferno is that it has become grind A1 till you can grind AII, till you can grind A3, till you can Grind AIV. The difficulty should have been much flatter and the difference in drop % between acts should have been closer together. So we can feel good about finally getting to a fun damage build again without having to be defense whores. If A4 has the best drop rates and you can do it alright why would you go back to lower acts? I thought they were trying to rid themselves of that with the concept of Inferno. ATM it just feels like another harder difficulty.

The only reason the item hunt isn’t sustainable is because there’s no goal. All powerful rares is not fun or exciting EXCEPT when it’s extremely powerful in limited quantities. For me, D2 was all about finding your sets/uniques and then working on finding runewords/rare/crafted upgrades. In D3, there is no awesome set that can let me farm inferno until I find the “real” items. Part of the problem is that we skipped entire tiers of gear and Blizzard was to cautious about having good uniques/sets.

Yeah I remeber those days when you were just starting and a while pasted and you got to say for example all of the sorcs set (Tal’Rasha set im pretty sure it was called) and you put on all the peices and suddenly your char was surrouned by lights making her look like a hardcore badass and you were like no way I freaking love this game….

Wow, never thought I’d see what is essentially a public apology from Blizzard.

Their back-end stat collection must really be indicating something they don’t like — either hours played have dropped off severely, or they’re noticing a huge amount of people stop playing at a certain point in progression, or something. They never say things like this lightly, given that their community relations are more prone to condescension than sober-eyed remorse.

The hilarious thing is — I’m still having tons of fun. I realize that it’s probably not sustainable, but what is? I didn’t do “runs” in D2, and there are too many awesome games to play to even think that they can somehow undo the diminishing returns of fun present in all games.

This is good that Blizzard is admitting and addressing Diablo 3’s faults, and I can see a lot of constructive comments in the forums instead of piles of hate.

One thought to add to this discussion, it may not be possible to ever re-create the magic of D2 in an ARPG game. The Diablo series veterans have aged, matured and experienced other forms of gaming in the interim. Newcomers will have less patience to sink the time the old players did into D1 & D2. Also D3 has to compete with really advanced 3D rendered games such as Skyrim that have a similar genre (I stopped playing Skyrim faster than I’ve slowed down on D3 BTW). With so many attractions in the gaming industry and with smart phones and busy lives and what not, perhaps as gamers as a whole we have less time to dedicate to a massive time-sink like Diablo than we did back in 1997-2005 era. Blizzard could patch up D3 real good and make it the best possible isometric view ARPG in the history of the universe and it still might not meet our expectations. My two cents. Now to play some Minecraft 😛

Ivan, that’s what’s supposed to make Blizzard stand out. They aren’t other companies that produce new games every year or new versions of the same game for full price. They create high quality games that last decades. In this case they have failed atm, but I have faith they can bring it back.

I think we just disagree here on a basic level. No hard feelings, or anything–I really like Blizzard due to the high quality of their games, the polish, and then fun factor.

I loved D1 and D2, as well as WC2 and WC3. Even so, I played D2 longest of all, and that was for about 3 years. I never made it close to the 12 that the hardcore D2 faithful did.

I played WoW on and off for a while, too, (less total time than D2). But the point is, every well runs dry eventually, for me, anyway. If you got decades of mileage out of multiple Blizzard games–cheers!–but it never did for me. I’m hoping for about 3 years out of D3.

I paid $60 bucks for a game and I think I’ve had $60 bucks worth of fun. That’s the same amount you pay for a decent meal or a fair bottle of scotch. Lightning struck with D2 and everyone thought they could do it again. Well they didn’t but it was fun and it gives me a chance to play another game. I am hoping Borderlands 2 is my next loot pinata game.

They need to balance the game better (which requires a LOT of changes, not just a fix to IAS or crit or resistance or ranged vs melee), and then increase the level of challenge in inferno or add alternate modes that have increased challenge, like some kind of arena where you fight off waves of monsters of gradually increasing difficulty, trying to see how far you can get.

It would also be nice if we could spend more time fighting monsters and less time identifying and vendoring useless rares. They don’t have to increase the drop rate of good items, just reduce how much time I waste filtering through useless junk. Though seeing more class specific items (which are currently quite rare) could be nice I suppose.

Ok I never was a hater but now im starting to turn now you can say im a moron and I have bad spelling because I do and I admit that. Im proble going to be called a troll and I do not blame you because if this was a month ago and somone posted this I woulda ccalled them a troll. But I am now starting to loose all faith in diablo and I have played diablo 2 sense I was 6 im 16 now and still love that freaking retarded game even if it ahs 50 openly used hacks I DO NOT GIVE A **** because it still freaking rules. Now for the REAL reason why im typing this comment. I honestly think 100% sure that if blizzard does not get there **** together that they have ruined the good and true name of Diablo and that they should of NEVER made D3 if it was going to be this pathedic. I mean come the hell on I have been playing diablo2 for 10+ years now and still have not got borde of it. I got borde of D3 in what a month and half maybe? No I would say less. I still remain hopeful that blizzard will get there **** together and make D3 as awesome as D2. But right now at this point I have lost all interest in playing untell PvP comes out and by then if they have not fixed it im just so srry to say this sense I pre-orderd this game 2 years ago on my birth day thinking I cant wait for this game. Well srry to say I will have to unistall D3 and look back and think hell with it and put in D2 LoD and start a poision necro because I have yet to do it and beat hell. To those who think im trolling I understand.

I recently read about Path of Exile’s endgame with maphunting. That is what the D3 endgame should have been. They even had a fourth inferno like difficulty, but ended scrapping it because they could see from d3 it wasnt working. It is definitely ingenious I must admit.

There are a couple of things i miss that i really loved about D2. I loved that there were low level set items. I played the game in the hope of one day “finding” every set and unique there was to have. For that to happen you could make as many accounts and mules as need be, in D3 they have made the stash way to small, maybe having a separate stash that only Set and Legendary items went into would help with that problem, then you could collect them all.

Another big disappoint for me is that so much of the game just isn’t random map. IMO all of outside should be a lot more like the start of Act3 in D2. Parts where you can go the wrong way for ages, or a lot more of not knowing what dungeon to go in. D3 is way to much of a straight line ❗ Having the game more about finding the best items at the top lvl is “stupid”. I’m not as good at D3 as i was at D2 (Maybe it’s a getting older thing 🙁 ) despite that i still only play HC. I haven’t even got to Hell diff yet let alone Inferno. Why cant i be having a lot more fun along the way.

Something i am glad about that a “lot of people probably aren’t” is them getting rid of the ladder, the ladder was fine until it was made that old characters couldn’t play with new ones, when that was done there was nobody left (or none that showed up for me because I’m in Aus) because they had all gone to the new ladder. That was the only thing that made me give up playing D2.

they need to do some serious over hauling and almost completely throw out some of the things that they would say are “too concete” at this point. The game is a sinking ship right now – they need to do a lot of the things that other people are suggesting that was already in Diablo 2, such as permenent skill systems that can work with the rune system improve on what was already in diablo2. When I started up Diablo2 again with a necromancer I couldn’t wait to build up a summoner necro and invest those points up building a necromancer I deemed was “mine”. They need to take drastic action not do what I know they will which is stupid little game tweaks because they’re too scared to fix it right. They put too much effort into production quality hence why we have this over done childish story line with big effects and lost sight of the horror feel of diablo1/2 – they obviously thought they would appeal to the World of Warcraft crowd by making it look similar with its pretty and bright artistic colors and I’m glad to see that stupid little marketing tactic back lash on them. Stop making your games look like World of Warcraft please.

I stopped playing. I had a lot of fun, clocked about 100 hours, leveled a HC character to 60. And it just feels like there isn’t anything left to do. No end game content, no reason to re-roll a character to play a different build.

Tbh, I don’t mind so much. At this point in my life I don’t want a game that sucks away as many hours as D2 did. But, I also probably won’t buy another Blizzard game seeing how far they’ve drifted into casual gaming territory. There are a million other places to play casual games, and for free.

I agree also cept I will get the the next starcrafts. Mainly because its the perfect strag game and fun and challenging but whats so great about it is its all freaking skill least thats what im going back to less my faith in D3 is restored ima go back to D2 single player and SC2.

Maybe I’m missing something but D3 towards the end doesn’t feel all the different than D2? Grind maps, look for gear? What else was there that I’ve missed? Trade/Item sellers = Trade/GAH–RMAH..

About the only thing that feels different to me are they uniques vs. the random pool items. Still have the opportunity to get the best “rolls” but yeah sure the flexing of wearing certain pieces may be missing?

I guess the big ticket item is re-rolling alts for different types of skill usages and unique items.. I’ve pretty much put in a metric assload of time into this game and am still enjoying it with only a monk up to 60, so it’s been a very good value for me personally. About the only things I would have liked to have seen was a less streamlined leveling experience.

1) No PvP. 2) No World PvP (non-arena). 3) No Pking. 4) Horrible, bland, and non-enticing loot (bad legendaries and bad affixes) 5) 5x less legendaries in the game than D2. 6) A shitty drop % on loot so it’s super boring to farm. 7) No ability/need to remake characters in order to try new builds/perfect a build. 8- 100x less character customization without attributes and skill points/skill tree. Plus builds being bottle-necked into 1-2 types thanks to inferno. 9) Lack of gearing depth/balancing of fhr, ias, fcr, +skills, cannot be frozen, open wounds, crushing blow, fbr, dr, res and other valuable “mechanic” affixes – in D3 it’s all about stacking res, ias, and primary affix to the max. All builds play like physical classes of D2 in terms of gearing, while D2 had physical, caster, and hybrid item gearing. 10) Gearing isn’t radically different for different builds, therefore loot is even less appealing. 11) 7 gems + 8 unique jewels + 33 runes + a NEAR LIMITLESS variety of magic/rare jewels. So actual socketable choices compared to just choosing your primary stat gem out of the 4 gems. 12) No ethereal items, no superior items. 13) Much, much worse/limited crafting system – no way to reroll affixes. 14) White items are useless – cannot be made socketable, used for runewords, used for crafting, imbueable, etc. 15) Social aspect is pretty much non-existant with lack of dedicated chat channels, auto-matched games, no separate game names, 4-player limit, and bnet 2.0 ghost town effect. 16) Almost no randomization with dungeons, no randomization of static outside areas, and much more linear/cramped map in general. 17) PvE is not fun like with D2, monster killing doesn’t make you feel like a god, it makes you feel like a weak idiot running around desperately. 18) Trying builds out of the box is severely punished with Inferno difficulty – and cookie-cutter item builds. 19) RMAH destroys incentives to try to grow stronger yourself, and even if you don’t use it, it’s presence saps the reward of finding good items – also the entire system is built around RMAH so item drops are shit anyways 20) Set rewards are laughable, as are many of the chance based affixes such as knockback. Again, making items much more bland. 21) Farming feels like work, in which you earn a steady hourly wage, it no longer feels like playing the slot machine. This is due to the low drops chance of an actually good item, legenedaries being crappy, gold being a lootable currency, as well as many of the items now simply being sold as unid. 22) No gambling.

This is just off the top of my head, for why the replayability is so much worse. I’ve only just scratched the surface for why the D3 experience as a whole is MUCH less fun than D2.

Anyways, I predicted from the beginning, even pre-beta, that the game would be suffering from a severe lack of replayability and would most likely be doomed because of it. The more you dumb down a game, the more replayablity suffers. A good 30%+ of the beta players on the forum were riled up about this very issue and forewarning Blizzard… too bad Blizzard didn’t listen.

I doubt they’ll listen now, and will go along with whatever change that THEY think will make for a good game not what the majority of the community thinks… as they ALWAYS HAVE. There’s no chance in hell that they’ll start actually listening to players now. Blizzard does what it thinks best. And for better or for worse (it’s worse), that’s just the way it is.

You are completely missing the point. A system where you can add points here and there and BUILD a character adds to the longevity of the game. For example, if D3 had such a system, I would play 50+ hours making a Nether Tentacle DH. Once I got bored with the NT DH, I would have incentive to play another 50+ hours making a Electric Ball DH, or something to that effect.

With D3, while the instant respec is fun and a blast, it does not add to the longevity of the game. There’s no reason for me to invest more hours playing the game to make a particular type of character.

Hi Vadoff, I agree with most of your comments (wasn’t a fan of the PK stuff), yet I am still optimistic that D3 will have a future with some good patching, especially when blizzard pays attention to this stuff. As far as skills go, the current system (on the fly no skill tree) could be improved by adding runes that could be found in the game which would give your character a unique feel. Make the dropped runes really powerful as well

I’ve always thought bringing back spell books from D1 would work nicely with this system as well as another way to customize your character, make them something you really have to hunt for, and available to all classes. Give players 1 or 2 slots for spell book spells. Bloodstar anyone? 🙂

Honestly, they just need to fire Jay Wilson. His ideas are literally driving this game into the ground, as long as he’s still around D3 WILL fail. Their best course of action is to simply fire him, then replace him with someone who’s more competent. Also, hiring a group of people that have actually posted accurate lists of problems/valid and popular suggestions on the forum would be a good idea as clearly these forum users know much more about “fun” than the dev team ever could.

In a lot of ways Skyrim was an all around more impressive game than D3, yet despite all its shortcomings (may not have decade long staying power of D2) I found D3 more compelling to sink more hours into than Skyrim. I found with Skyrim after exploring the beautiful world and doing like 50 quests each quest started to feel the same, go to dungeon X to retrieve item Y, and return it to NPC Z for some EXP and gold. Then I stopped playing, I felt I had played everything the game had to offer me, and have no regrets quitting half way through.

maybe implement something like the old caves in lufia. For the ones who dont know what it is:

A 99 levels cave where u only can go down and u cant go out untill u find a specific item or get to 99 and defeat the boss. Monsters getting stronger the deeper u getting in the cave. You start naked everytime and can only use the items found in the cave.

1) They admit having failed in deliver a good endgame 2) They announce WoW MoP Addon 3) Pissed off D3 players buy WoW addon 4) They come up with a great endgame for D3 5) Players will come back to D3, after having bought WoW MoP 6) They implement ways to connect D3 and WoW MoP, so players keep paying the WoW monthly subscription 7) ActivisionBlizzard knocks at my door with S.W.A.T for having posted this comment

It’s good to see Blizzard manning-up to the fact they know their end game isn’t sustainable. Some people have more patience than others, I was only able to put up with about 40 hours of Inferno farming before I just started losing interest — it just feels like there aren’t any interesting items to find, or that self-found upgrades are non-existent.

Flux touched on a lot of problems with this game in this thread, and you know that Blizzard is going to do it’s best to fix them — but I feel that the item design is inherently flawed and no amount of patches is going to fix it. I still had my fun with this game (200 hours), but the end game in this game just falls flat on it’s face.

At the other hand. Suppose D3 HAD a terrific so called end game with contstant new content patches and a hardcore PvP Arena system…

Blizzard would be fools to market such a game without subscriptions along side WOW…

Diablo 3 is a great on line game as such: smooth fights, easy grouping in lower levels, challenging in the highest ones.

I have one character DH in Inferno and I am still advancing. Sometimes it is a core and sometimes it is quite fun.

Now I play Hardcore Monk along with the a same level/stats softcore Monk into his 40’s. So that whenever I loose the HC one I stil have my softcore one.

With 3 more classes to go I have hundreds hours of simple gaming fun to lookout for. While you may play any other casual game, I don’t see other games taking 300/400 hours of my time in the next year besides WOW.

ow where are the times when a small company made a great game….now a HUGE company makes a….mutant…weird…game. When a game could be taken upon and improved….like Hellfire did to Diablo 1…? Now one can not…couse a monster corporation like Blizzard can not afford loosing money….fame..tarnish its foolish pride. I allways said…take something that is ok, prooven to work…like D2, and work upon it – it’s not a crime, it’s evolution – makes people happy – but pride….infatuation makes Blizzard yell at us – “D3 is NOT D2”. Well now what? Work hard upon bringing back all that was good in D1 and D2. D3 is a nice game…great graphics, and some playing mechanics…but on a long term…D2 IS still king.

An expansion is the only thing that could save this game….because item mechanics and all that involves loot….is not working good in D3….it is preety fukd up.

I get no rewarding feeling like I used to get in D2 – when a Unique item droped….not to mention when a rune word was completed. I grind…for days with no success…at all. I get no satisfaction. recently I started playing a WD – and it is alot more fun then I thought it would be – the skill system on this character keeps me entertained…but when I will hit lvl 60….then what?….nothing.

OMG..the only what i can say. What have they made the last 5-6 years??? After 6 weeks of play, they admit that the endgame is not that, what they want??? WTH? Joking od what?

Tsts, iam speechless, all speculations, that D3 was made “around” the AH (RMAH) will become true. Thats crazy, they going realy realy wrong with it. The levelcap, no ladder, thats break D3 the neck, just said it long before. And now it is true, after 150 hours of play, it gets boring. The only motivation is, to find a item that i can sell on RMAH??? Mhh, for a week it es ok, but more??? No, realy, iam sick of it all, years of wait and than 6 weeks of fun????

Was wondering how you were going to play this one, Thrall. MUST DEFEND BLIZZARD.. err… but wait a second… BLIZZARD IS BEING CRITICAL OF SELF… MUST AGREE WITH BLIZZARD!—- but WAIT! To agree with Blizzard I must criticize D3! Does not compute! Error, error!

Sry, but iam not a Blizz Hater. I liked D2, have played it al lot more than 150 hours and for sure, the first year intensivly. D2 was not perfect too. But “the feeling” was great (for me). And all i expected from Blizz for D3, polish the graphics of good state (not THE best graphic) and give us eventually some new chars and areas.

What we get? No lobby, no ladder, and now Blizz knowing, no ENDGAME for fun. Thats ok, for a normal game, right. But with the history from Blizz, with the background of D1 and D2, is D3 at the current state not that, what all/most have await. And this is it, what me made angry. They have doen a so long time, short befort release, they cancel a whole part of the system and change it. Sorry, but i cant imagine, that this lack of feeling disappear by testing…

I wrote too, i like it, i loke most of the new chars, the story ist for the first time nice and the graphics are good. But, mhh, the feeling isnt it. And that makes me realy sad…sad that i get not this game, that i waiting for. A nice game, with the try, to make money like WoW, and that goes terrible wrong.

This report is a hugely embarrassing confession. We’re led to believe that they spent years developing this and after the release start thinking about end-game content?!?

There used to be a company called Blizzard – not sure if people remember them, but they were run by gamers, for gamers. This Activision version is run by bean counters for shareholders. Sad but true ….

Diablo III doesn’t need end-game (it would be nice to have one, but it’s not required), it needs:

1. ladder 2. proper itemization 3. proper skill system tied to itemization encouraging to level up new character, experiment, make fun, new, builds 4. sense of progression even at inferno

Diabo II had all of this. It had ladder, it had super itemization working well througout ALL of the difficulty levels, it had varied and interesting skills tied directly to items and gameplay mechanics. It had sense of progression (99lvl cap) even when all you did was running Baal or Tristram. Diablo III lacks all those things. End game won’t solve this game’s problems that are inherit to how it was designed.

There’s so many things wrong with D3 I’ll just list two that concern me the most.

Gamb…Crafting. Crafting is an epic fail.Instead of making it useful like in beta, they nerfed it into the ground. Requiring you to buy plans, collect materials, and gold for something totally random. An npc had it right, “Too much pain and not enough profit.”

Itemization, another failure, due to the way Inferno works, everyone is looking for the same set of stat. People kept up with the grind in D2 because it is rewarding. It feels great collecting useful items and trying out oddball build for your class. However, it is NOT rewarding after 200+ hours, finding 10 legendaries each and single one of them vendor trash.

I honestly don’t know how they’re going to turn this game around, because doing so would make this a completely new game.

Consider yourself blessed! ;D One (in numbers: 1) level 38 legendary item and no set items in 250+ hours of playtime so far here … Which is probably for the best so I don’t need to worry about how those are still crap even after two design review passes.

I have some idea for end game challenge or inferno support. Chaos machine or merchant machine. Basicly i drop to this machine low weappn some gems what u like saphire or topaz and some recipe 1000 gold and u make better item like was in mu online better stronger items shinny stuff looks better and stronger if u fail u lost item gems gold and u have to recive new or buy it also they can make some dunegeon system with random enemys location from 1 to 100 levels on last levels shuld be the hardest mobs who drop epic items sry for bad english

With all that online-only mischief, continued financing of the game through auction fees (instead of subscriptions), major balancing (skill/difficulty reworks) and complete system overhauls (loot beyond Rare, MF) post-release and purchase-included content (PVP) being pushed back to ‘somewhere on the far horizon’, it seems like the developers graced their players with most inconveniences of their MMO – all while categorically ruling out possible benefits like regular content updates and costumer service at the same time, of course.

Again, it’s pretty cynical when you think about how half-baked and ‘rushed towards release’ D3 feels in the end. A sequel to a decade-old game, rushed by Blizzard… it’s probably healthier not to waste anymore thoughts on that.

There is no real item hunt anymore. It is item hunting on the RMAH which is part of the reasons why this game fails for the long term. They exchanged the soul of what made Diablo a great game for dollar signs. More than half the fun of D1 and D2 was finding items yourself.

Hey Thrall. Thats ok that you like it, any many of the people, that you call “haters” like it too, but they are very sad about the product, what they bought or want or expected. And many have said it long time ago, levelcap, a non existant lobby or some other minor things will be/can destroy the longplayety.

And Blizz have defend his ways more then trillion times, all will be good, players must played it and all will good. So the consens, that all hear it again and again.

And after 24 Hours the first was 60, a week was Inferno gone, 4 weeks HC inferno gone. And now, after 5/6 Weeks, blizz himself gives a statement, that the end game is not that, what they want. haha, is funny right??? Noo, not realy, makes me sad and i ask, have they played internal only the beta???? Or has anybody have play inferno for 50 hours and give back a statment, that is fun to grind???

Ther is a differenc between haters and ppl, they make some critical comments.

Sure for your mind, if you have played by now only for some hours, than is all fine and you can enjoy the game for long hours again. But you will come to the point, were you ask the same questions like in this comments…

The end game isn’t going to have any kind of longevity with me until they remove or seriously scale back the AH, especially the RMAH. It irrevocably impairs both Blizzard’s ability to balance the challenge of their game and the loot hunt characteristics that made Diablo 2 great. It’s as simple as that.

I still play D2, not nearly as often or as much as I did at release and for several years after that. Here are my differences and why I haven’t touched D3 for a while.

1) I do not feel like a god of destruction in D3. I love blowing up the whole screen in D2. There is difficulty in D2, run into too many or bad boss packs at the same time and you could be toast. In D3, hit, retreat, hit retreat, blah blah. At no stage did I feel like I could run around the whole screen to gather a crapload of monsters to destroy.

so whoever said activision and blizzard were complete seperate entities that had NOTHING to do with eachother, look above and feel like a retard, if you don’t, you don’t get it.

btw, vivendi is thinking of selling THE UNIT AS A WHOLE, recent news k, follow it.

second of all this supposed theory about end game having to either contain pvp or be an mmo is total and utter bullshit

how retarded can you be to think all types of games have been invented and nothing new fitting the end-game bill will ever arise?

thats pretty much what the creative goal of a new game should be, to get played shitloads. doing that by making it insanely hard or long is so 20th century, welcome to the 21st where we do this with end-game.

for over a year they pandered and tried to placate the masses by showing them badass videos and promising awesome features

then when they allowed MINOR beta access they told the people with constructive criticism that THEY KNEW BETTER, limited access and over a year later and beta STILL had unresolved problems while Blizzard continued to hide most of the game from testers (even under the NDA)

towards end of beta even more drastic skill system changed go into effect with much complaining from the playerbase, Blizzard ignores complaints and unresolved prior issues

game releases without balanced skills, incredibly dull item system, TERRIBLE story, homogenized chars with auto-stats, barely functional AH (which quickly ruined any hope for an “economy”), no ladder, no offline functionality, and with NO PVP whatsoever, and the only PVP planned to be included at a later date is going to be some half-assed ARENA PVP BULLSHIT

NOW THESE MORONS CLAIM 20/20 “HINDSIGHT”?!?!?!?!?

clearly they had 20/20 “HINDSIGHT” this entire fucking time because their collective heads have been up their fucking asses for like 6 years

FUCK YOU JAY WILSON AND CHRIS METZEN, if there was any justice in the world neither of you two assholes would be allowed to work in the videogame world ever again

D3 is great fun, but the appeal of playing twinks is gone. This is unfortunate because that was a huge draw for D2. It was fun to have gear lined up and totally stomp content. Twink play was rewarded with imbues, socket quest, and other item rewards. You could also find valuable end game uniques and charms as early as end of normal (soj).

D3 has none of these rewards. Adding these types of features would go a long way to improving replayability at all levels of the game. As of now, spending time in anything but inferno feels like a waste. That is the only place to progress by playing the game, other than playing the auction house.

Remove both auction houses and fix magic find they way it worked in D2. They bascially took the heart and soul out of the loot find. The thrill of the hunt is more exting than being able to get the best gear from the auction houses. This worked for D2 over 10 years , funny how the item find isn’t enough when they implemented auction houses. Sometimes a step backwards is a way to move forward for the better of the game.

I played about 400 hours so far… Pretty fun. The thing killing my interest faster than boredom (a bit of which is there) is knowing that they will change everything several times, including the items, which kind of makes item farming a bit pointless.

Edit: i meant to reply to the link posted to Path of Exile back on the first page of comments!

Based on this link, and the snippets I’d heard about Path of Exile, I was really excited about the dev diary. Itemized endgame maps? Yes please! It worked for Disgaea.

I read up on Path of Exile, watched some vids, looked amazing, so I dropped $10 to join the beta. Sunk 4 hours into it today and I feel like I cheated on my wife!

The craziest part is, I agreed (and still do!) with all of D3’s design choices. Freespec, runes, AH, I understand the reasoning behind them and I think they were all well executed. I was a little perturbed by the abysmal itemization, but I was content with the design: über polished strategic combat, with a decent amount of theoretical build variety (pending the inevitable Blozz tuning).

But playing Path of Exile was an eye opener. Not that it changed my agreement with D3’s design choices, but Path of Exile went the other direction and it seems to scratch the itch much more deeply. Active skills are free spec and much more customizable, but passive skills are fused with stats and extremely permanent, in a way that is just mind blowing. You’ll see what I’m talking about. Also, they took a wild leap, design wise, to spice up the economy: NO GOLD. Again, I all for the GAH and even the RMAH as a business model/anti-blak market system. But I like Path of Exile’s solution even better. There are several different currency items, from identify/portal scrolls to items that add mods/affixes, reroll items, upgrade their rarity, etc. The devs have a great design writeup on the site, I encourage everyone to check it out.

The unfortunate thing for Blizzard is, I would never have taken the time to investigate Path of Exile if Blizz hadn’t come out and announced that they wouldn’t be addressing itemization the day after I reluctantly invested in a gold-find suit. Sorry Blizz, I’ll still play, but you stumbled and I looked up and saw your competition. And they’re fucking KILLING it.

Personally, I think a D2-style ladder server would go a long way, along with a viable PvP system. The Starcraft 2 matchmaking system never worked for me though, especially years post-release when player counts are really low at times. Believing a similar system would work for Diablo 3 is wishful thinking, as if there will ever be hundreds of matchings taking place with players of varying skill/gear level at one time (which is what is needed for this system to truly shine)